Relationships among measures of communication, marital satisfaction and exposure during couples treatment of agoraphobia

The goals of this study were to examine the relationships among measures of couples interactions (satisfaction and communication), and response to treatment within a group of agoraphobic clients and their partners. The treatment included the clients' partners in structured, graduated in vivo exposure practices. Twenty-two clients and their partners completed pre-, mid- and post-treatment assessments. Treatment responders rated themselves and their partners as more communicative regarding the client's fears, at pre- and mid-assessments in comparison to nonresponders; measures of communication related inversely to levels of anxiety reported during exposures, but marital satisfaction did not relate to any measure of exposure. In addition, level of anxiety during exposure differentiated responders from nonresponders; responders experienced a significant reduction in their levels of anxiety. Finally, ratings of frequency of communication at mid-assessment were highly predictive of treatment outcome at post-assessment. The implications from these findings for communication skills training for a subset of couples who enter couples treatment for agoraphobia are discussed.     

Further experiments on the perception of growth in three dimensions

Mark and Todd (1983) reported an experiment in which the cardioidal strain transformation was extended to three dimensions and applied to a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the head of a 15-year-old girl in a direction that made the transformed head appear younger to the vast majority of their subjects. The experiments reported here extend this research in order to examine whether subjects are indeed detecting cardioidal strain in three dimensions, rather than detecting changes in head slant or making 2-D comparisons of the shape of the occluding contour. Three-dimensional surfaces were obtained by measuring a real head manually (Experiment 1) and with a laser scanner (Experiment 2), and transformed to different age levels using the 3-D strain transformation described by Mark and Todd (1983). There were no statistically significant differences in the accuracy with which relative age judgments could be made in response to pairs of profiles, pairs of 3/4 views, or pairs of mixed views (profile plus 3/4 view), suggesting that subjects can indeed extract the cardioidal strain level of the head in three dimensions. However, an additional effect that emerged in these studies was that judgments were crucially affected by the instructions given to subjects, which suggests that factors other than cardioidal strain are important in making judgments about rich data structures.     

Desire for social contact,not empathy,may explain “rescue” behavior in rats

Ben-Ami Bartal et al. (Science 334:1427–1430, 2011) showed that a rat in an open space (free rat) would touch the front door of a restraining tube to open its rear door, thereby enabling a rat trapped within (trapped rat) to enter a larger space that was farther away from the free rat. Since opening the rear door distanced the trapped rat from the free rat, Ben-Ami Bartal et al. argued free-rat behavior could not be motivated by the pursuit of social contact. Instead, this rat was empathically motivated, its goal being to reduce the presumed distress of the rat trapped in the restraining tube. In two experiments, we show that (a) a free rat will not learn to touch the front door to open the rear door when it is the first condition of the experiment; (b) over time, a trapped rat will often return to a restraining tube despite its presumed aversiveness; and (c) a free rat experienced in touching the front door will continue to touch it even if touching does not free the trapped rat. We explain these results and Ben-Ami Bartal et al.’s in terms of two processes, neophobia and the pursuit of social contact. When first placed in a restraining tube, neophobia causes the trapped rat to escape the tube when the rear door is opened. Across sessions, neophobia diminishes, permitting the rats’ pursuit of social contact to emerge and dominate free- and trapped-rat behavior.     

Innovations in the Identification and Referral of Mothers at Risk for Depression: Development of a Peer-to-Peer Model

This paper describes a feasibility study of a peer-delivered prevention intervention to identify mothers at high risk for depression and facilitate engagement in mental health services for their emotional health. Sixteen family peer advocates and their supervisors partnered with academic researchers over a period of 6 months to develop a four-session intervention that focused on identifying symptoms of depression, providing education about depression and treatment, actively linking caregivers to treatment for their own emotional health, and assisting caregivers in becoming active participants in their mental health care. Collaborating with peers to develop the model enhanced its perceived relevance and utility, and resulted in an intervention that was complimentary to their roles and the mission of peer-delivered support services. Peer/professional partnerships may be beneficial for enhancing the feasibility and acceptability of research efforts; the impact of peers’ participation in the current project and the need for future research to develop and study peer-delivered models is discussed.     

Mindfulness and the myth of mental illness: implications for theory and practice

Over the past 60 years Thomas Szasz (1960, 1961[1974], 2008) has forcefully argued that mental illnesses are mythical since all medical diseases are located in the body and, thus, have somatic causes. This has been accompanied by a scathing and coruscating critique of the whole mental health profession—particularly, those psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists who collude in and exploit the alleged mythology of counterfeit mental disorders and often (unwittingly or deliberately) justify coercion, oppression and pharmacological manipulation of so-called ‘mental patients’ in the name of ‘treatments’. Since mindfulness practitioners—perhaps especially teachers of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction and related programmes—may, by association, be partially implicated in Szasz's allegations, this article seeks to explore and examine the implications for theory and practice in the field. It will be suggested that the strong foundational, theoretical, research and teaching bases of mindfulness-based interventions offer practitioners a solid defence against the general critique offered by Szasz, and more specific challenges advanced by critics such as Boysen (2007) and Whitaker (2010). However, there may still be potential pitfalls for those mindfulness-based interventions which are too closely allied to the psychiatric/pscychotheraputic establishment, and some suggestions for avoiding such obstacles will be offered through recommendations for maintaining connections between mindfulness and its Buddhist origins.     

Why Bioethics Cannot Figure Out What to Do with Race

Race and religion are integral parts of bioethics. Harm and oppression, with the aim of social and political control, have been wrought in the name of religion against Blacks and people of color as embodied in the Ten Commandments, the Inquisition, and in the history of the Holy Crusades. Missionaries came armed with Judeo/Christian beliefs went to nations of people of color who had their own belief systems and forced change and caused untold harms because the indigenous belief systems were incompatible with their own. The indigenous people were denounced as ungodly, pagan, uncivilized, and savage. Hence, laws were enacted because of their perceived need to structure a sense of morality and to create and build a culture for these indigenous people of color. To date bioethics continues to be informed by a Western worldview that is Judeo/Christian in belief and orientation. However, missing from bioethical discourse in America is the historical influence of the Black Church as a cultural repository, which continues to influence the culture of Africans and Blacks. Cultural aspects of peoples of color are still largely ignored today. In attempting to deal with issues of race while steering clear of the religious and cultural impact of the Black Church, bioethics finds itself in the middle of a distressing situation: it simply cannot figure out what to do with race.     

The Relative Strength of Job Attitudes and Job Embeddedness in Predicting Turnover in a U.S. Military Academy

This longitudinal study explored the relative strength of job satisfaction, components of organizational commitment, dimensions of job embeddedness and person–organization fit as predictors of voluntary turnover at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Using survey data from 643 first- and second-year cadets, we found that job satisfaction, affective commitment, on-the-job embeddedness, and person–organization fit were significantly negatively related to turnover. Based on relative weights analysis, we found the most powerful predictor of cadet turnover was person–organization fit, which has important implications for military leaders.     

The Effect of Age on Relative Timing Variability and Transfer

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential qualitative differences in relative timing across age both within and across speed conditions. Forty right-handed males performed 48 trials of a five-component coincident-timing task at one speed and then 16 more at a different speed. The independent variables were age (5-7, 8-10, 11-13 years, and adult), speed (slow and fast), and block order (training and transfer). The results indicated that within-speed relative timing consistency improved with increasing age for movement-time and pause-time components, while a cross-speed transfer improved with age only for pause time. Movement velocity emerged as a more stable timing parameter than movement time across speeds for all groups. The last movement-time component correlated highly with the total response times, suggesting that coincident-timing accuracy was controlled to a large degree by a final, fine-tuning correction. These results imply that developmental deficits in relative timing increase the attention demands of a given task, thereby reducing a child’s capacity to concurrently control his movements and monitor events in the environment.     

The buffering effects of job embeddedness on negative shocks

Unpleasant events are a fact of organizational life. The way in which people respond to such events, however, varies. In the present study, we hypothesized and found that some individuals choose to respond to negative events in ways that helped the organization. Instead of withdrawing in an attempt to “get even” by reducing work outputs, these individuals improved their in-role and extra-role performance. The study examined the role that job embeddedness plays in creating this work enhancement reaction. Specifically, we discovered that on-the-job embeddedness helps reduce the impact of negative shocks on organizational citizenship and overall job performance. The findings of this study have important implications for both theory and practice.